If you read conservative media, you might have heard about a new danger stalking our besieged country. This week, Fox News warned about organized gangs of wine moms using antifa tactics against ICE. According to a column in the right-wing PJ Media, the greatest threat to our nation is a group of unindicted domestic terrorists' who are just AWFL: Affluent White Liberal Women.
Nobody escaped 2020 without hearing of at least a couple of media personalities that became wildly popular amongst conservatives for abandoning the left. They themselves, though, framed things a little differently. "The left left me," they proclaimed. There is something deeply revealing in this statement. These commentators didn't move an inch to the right. Perhaps the best example of this phenomenon is Bari Weiss, former op-ed editor at the New York Times and now editor-in-chief at CBS News.
There's nothing anti-feminists love more than using their platforms-afforded to them by decades of feminist activism-to tell other women that, actually, feminism is what's holding them back, and not the powers, institutions, or male politicians that be. Every headline I've read this year where someone like Megyn Kelly-or, more recently, Erika Kirk-suggests feminism is the root of society's ills has morphed me into a frantic medieval torture rat, desperately clawing my way into someone's abdomen to escape the heated metal cage placed over my body.
A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS.
"People are lazy," wrote Ailes in 1970. "With television you just sit-watch-listen. The thinking is done for you." This is effectively the mission statement of a generation of conservative propaganda ranging from Rush Limbaugh to Fox News to Alex Jones to Tim Pool to Candace Owens to Charlie Kirk. Just substitute YouTube, Twitter and podcasts to update it for our modern era targeting America's laziest thinkers like Joe Rogan.
(Screenshot via The Charlie Kirk Show) CNN's resident MAGA pundit Scott Jennings and Breitbart editor Alex Marlow have been tapped by the conservative Salem Radio Network to fill the national midday slot held by the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk. From January 5, Marlow will host the noon1 p.m. hour, with Jennings expanding his show to run from 13 p.m. ET, according to exclusive reporting by Axios.
The Department of War recently invited The American Conservative to be further integrated into its press operations. We have politely declined. This invitation was conditioned on TAC accepting the department's over-the-top press restrictions, including agreeing not to publish any confidential material that our affiliated reporters might acquire. TAC is a special publication. The "street cred" that comes with being a prominent, Washington-based publication originally founded by conservatives against the Iraq War is one of the many reasons our readers come back to our coverage.
Fuentes has repeatedly praised Hitler, likened "organized Jewry" to a "transnational gang," said that women should be "subordinate" to their husband, and called Chicago "nigger hell." In our text exchange, I reminded him of a clip from 2019 in which he said Jim Crow "was better for them; it's better for us." "What that 10 seconds clip from 7 years ago that is clearly a joke?" he responded. "You think thats a fair characterization of my body of work?"
After years of drifting ideology giving way to vibes, personality eclipsing principle a question has finally forced itself into view: Who gets to decide what it means to be right-wing? That question snapped into focus when Tucker Carlson chose to host Nick Fuentes, an openly antisemitic, white-supremacist troll. Fuentes is not complicated. He is clear. He is poison. Carlson's interview wasn't journalism; it was a declaration of borderlessness. If platforming is inherently neutral, then even the most explicit hatemongers can be folded into the tent.
Fast-forward to today and the original DTC wave has since dissipated. Digital and social customer acquisition costs are much higher, driving traffic is more competitive, direct-to-consumer is no longer a differentiator, and venture capital has significantly dried up now that money is no longer dirt cheap. It would seem that the large brands and the rest of the market have closed the last remaining ad arbitrage opportunities-or have they?
Three years later, the situation has changed completely, and precisely thanks to figures like Bruesewitz. This consultant, barely 27 years old, is an advisor to Donald Trump and was one of the architects of the podcast interview strategy that positioned the current president among young people under 30 during the 2024 election campaign. Between June and October, Trump gave 18 interviews on these platforms, while his rival, Kamala Harris, appeared in only four.
Today, I choose violence, he wrote. Literally. I know calls for violence are generally frowned upon, he added. The issue is I simply don't care. Ingersoll's argument was that the cost of anti-social and subversive behavior was not high enough, and in his opinion, some of this cost needs to be summary and ultra-violent. The law is not enough, he declared, and reiterated that he was literally calling for violence, writing, Is this a call for violence? Yes. Explicitly it is.
Jessica Reed Kraus likes to talk about the power of gossip and "quality conspiracy." The Substack and Instagram star, who writes under the handle "House Inhabit," became an unlikely powerhouse within the world of conservative media by providing her readers-many of them women-with just that. Although Kraus isn't a household name, she's famous to a slice of Americans; she told me that her Instagram stories can get more than a hundred million monthly views.
"What he would want more than anything is for people to channel their anger into proper activism," Bowyer told Johnson, a few minutes later advising viewers: "Consider yesterday that moment-that turning point for you-of thinking about getting involved in your local community or running for office."
And there's the end of Nike's famous imperative, "Just Do It," which will change to "Why Do It?" One could ask the same question of Nike's decision. But "it's not just a slogan," says Nike CMO Nicole Graham. "It's really a mindset and almost kind of a spiritual thing. It's like meditation or yoga. It's something that has so much reverence and beauty, but it's your job to continue to contemporize it and channel it in new dimensions."
There is no doubt that the Post will play a crucial role in engaging and enlightening readers, who are starved of serious reporting and puckish wit. Robert Thomson portrayed California as plagued by jaundiced, jaded journalism.
Edwin Brant Frost IV is accused of running a $140 million Ponzi scheme, targeting Republican activists through advertisements on conservative media, according to the SEC.
